Civil Commotion

Y’all will be comforted to know that Todd Courser, the Michigan legislator who attempted to smear himself with an e-mail claiming he solicited sex from a male prostitute — this so that worried voters would be relieved to learn that he was actually betraying his wife and children with a woman — has decided not to resign.

A Michigan lawmaker said he won’t resign after sending an email to Republican supporters falsely claiming he was caught having sex with a male prostitute and said in a statement released Monday he was the target of a blackmail attempt.

The Detroit News, citing audio recordings, reported Friday that Rep. Todd Courser of Lapeer had someone send the email to distract attention from his alleged extramarital affair with another lawmaker.

He now claims that it all had something to do with a blackmail attempt.

The retiring Republican Congresswoman that Courser would like to replace in 2016 has called for his resignation.

“Todd Courser, a man who never passes on an opportunity to preach about his supposed morals and his close relationship with God, constantly evoking religion in his personal and political stances, has proven to be completely unfit to represent the hardworking residents of Lapeer County, using taxpayer dollars to abide and assist his gross misconduct,” Miller said in a statement.

Even a Tea Party leader has called for his resignation:

“I think probably the best thing for them to do is resign and get their own personal lives straightened out,” said Gene Clem, president of VanKal Patriots, a Van Buren and Kalamazoo counties tea party group.

This is fun, don’t you think? I imagine legislative affairs are common enough, but how often does someone attempt to soften the bad publicity by preemptively smearing himself with rumors of homosexual dalliances?

And if I were gay I think this story would give me a severe case of indigestion. After all, gays have just won the right to marry throughout the United States, and their relationships are being cynically exploited? As in, “Whew. At least he wasn’t doing … THAT!” We can enjoy the ridiculous aspects of this story, but shouldn’t fail to recognize how casually gays are marginalized throughout American society.

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
V: Concerning the Slander of the so-called Evil Qualities

§379   The great Nihilistic counterfeiting concealed beneath an artful abuse of moral values.

• Love regarded as self-effacement; as also pity.

• Only the most impersonal intellect (“the philosopher”) can know the truth, “the true essence and nature of things”.

• Genius, great men are great, because they do not strive to further their own interests: the value of man increases in proportion as he effaces himself.

• Art as the work of the “pure free-willed subject “; misunderstanding of “objectivity”.

• Happiness as the object of life: virtue as a means to an end.

The pessimistic condemnation of life by Schopenhauer is a moral one. Transference of the herd standards into the realm of metaphysics.

The “individual” lacks sense, he must therefore have his origin in “the thing in itself” (and the significance of his existence must be shown to be “error”); parents are only an “accidental cause”. The mistake on the part of science is in not understanding the individuum: he is the entirety of all past life in one development and not its result.

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
V: Concerning the Slander of the so-called Evil Qualities

§378   “Thou shalt not tell a falsehood”: people insist upon truthfulness. But the acknowledgment of facts (the refusal to allow oneself to be lied to) has always been greatest with liars: they actually recognised the reality of this popular “truthfulness”. There is too much or too little being said continually: to insist upon people’s exposing themselves with every word they say, is a piece of naiveté.

People say what they think, they are “truthful”; but only under certain circumstances: that is to say, provided they be understood (inter pares) and understood with good will into the bargain (once more inter pares). One conceals one’s self in the presence of the unfamiliar: and he who would attain to something, says what he would want to have people think about him, but not what he thinks. (“The powerful always lie”).

Book Two: A Criticism of the Highest Values That Have Prevailed Hitherto
V: Concerning the Slander of the so-called Evil Qualities

§377   Falsity. Every sovereign instinct makes the others its instruments, its retainers and its sycophants: it never allows itself to be called by its more hateful name: and it brooks no terms of praise in which it cannot indirectly find its share. Around every sovereign instinct all praise and blame in general crystallises into a rigorous form of ceremonial and etiquette. This is one of the causes of falsity.

Every instinct which aspires to dominance, but which finds itself under a yoke, requisitions all the most beautiful names and the most generally accepted values to strengthen it and to support its self-esteem and this explains why as a rule it dares to come forward under the name of the “master” it is combating and from whom it would be free (for instance, under the domination of Christian values, the desires of the flesh and of power act in this way). This is the other cause of falsity.

In both cases complete naiveté reigns: the falseness never even occurs to the mind of those concerned. It is the sign of a broken instinct when man sees the motive force and its “expression” (“the mask”) as separate things — it is a sign of inner contradiction and is much less formidable. Absolute innocence in bearing, word and passion, a “good conscience” in falseness and the certainty wherewith all the grandest and most pompous words and attitudes are appropriated — all these things are necessary for victory.

In the other case: that is to say, when extreme clear-sightedness is present, the genius of the actor is needful as well as tremendous discipline in self-control, if victory is to be achieved. That is why priests are the cleverest and most conscious hypocrites; and then come princes, in whom their position in life and their antecedents account for a certain histrionic gift. Society men and diplomatists come third and women fourth.

Basic idea; Falsity seems so deep, so many-sided and the will is directed so inexorably against perfect self-knowledge and accurate self-classification, that one is very probably right in supposing that Truth and the will to truth are perhaps something quite different and only disguises. (The need for faith is the greatest obstacle in the way of truthfulness).

Remember this story?

Republican Representative Todd Courser from Lapeer County says one of the bills would require that a clergy member sign any marriage certificate in Michigan.

“I’m completely traditional marriage – I believe that the traditional marriage is really God’s model for marriage.

Todd Courser is the guy just caught attempting to smear himself with rumors that he visits a male prostitute so that when it was discovered he actually was having an affair with a female lawmaker … why, everybody would be so relieved he was betraying his wife and children with a woman that it would be no story at all.

The man doesn’t really know the constituents he pretends to be one of. If he’d studied the career of David Vitter, he’d know that godly folk don’t hold it against one of their own when he is caught with his pants down.